Represent and destroy

"In the global convulsions in the aftermath of World War II, one dominant world racial order broke apart and a new one emerged. This is the story Jodi Melamed tells in Represent and Destroy, portraying the postwar racial break as a transition from white supremacist modernity to a formally antiracist liberal capitalist modernity in which racial violence works normatively by policing representations of difference. Following the institutionalization of literature as a privileged domain for Americans to get to know difference--to describe, teach, and situate themselves with respect to…